Architectural students are helping tenants visualise improvements to their council homes in Wrexham.
An award winning partnership set up between Wrexham Council and the local Glyndwr University has helped tenants to visualise an extensive improvements project that is about to commence on their estate.
The council’s housing service, tenants and a group of students from the town’s Glyndwr University won the award for ‘Best Practice in Tenant Engagement’ at the Welsh Tenants Community Awards, held in Llandrindod Wells at the end of September.
The partnership was created to help engage council tenants with the extensive housing improvements project due to be carried out on the Plas Madoc estate. The estate contains around 400 non-traditional, steel framed, Cubbitt properties, many of which were built towards the end of the 1960s on Radburn design principles, which now have compatibility issues with modern living.
The vast majority of these properties are still owned by the council and are due to receive external wall insulation and roofing improvement work in the near future. This is designed to improve the heat efficiency of the homes and reduce fuel bills, as well as modernise their external appearance.
The work is part of Wrexham Council’s extensive improvements project to ensure all its housing stock achieves the Welsh Housing Quality Standard by 2020.
However, the improvements gave the council an opportunity to take a holistic view of the estate and identify where improvements can be made to the environment and landscape as well as to the properties themselves. Other potential improvements could include more off street parking space, improving the visibility for surrounding buildings and allow for new trees, plants and landscape redesign. There will also be an opportunity for new properties to be built.
Clair Evans, the council’s tenant participation officer, explained how the partnership came about: ‘To ensure the Plas Madoc community felt engaged with the re-generation project, we invited them to participate in two days of traditional consultation. For the consultation event, officers sought the assistance of three students from Glyndwr University who were about to sit their degrees in the built environment. The students had a wealth of new innovative ideas and inspired us to be more creative and to think outside the box. Working together with our planning colleagues and the three enthusiastic architects, we completed a design and created some thought-provoking activities to inspire the stakeholders into visualising the potential to reshape their community.’
Architectural design technology graduates Thom Gordon, Darren Pleavin and Ben Turner, created a table top sized model of the estate, complete with buildings and landmarks, which was used at the tenants’ open day event. The students are also now in the process of creating a 3D computer generated walkthrough video (still shot featured) which will show how the estate could potentially look after improvements have been carried out.
Sponsorship for the partnership was provided by Novus Property Solutions and Top Notch Ltd, two contractors currently carrying out housing improvement work for Wrexham Council.
Glyndwr Student, Thom Gordon said: ‘We’re all delighted that our partnership with the council has been recognized with this national award. We were originally approached by Wrexham Council earlier this year to help put together the open day event for Plas Madoc. They wanted something to help the local tenants visualize some of the changes which are planned for the estate. Plas Madoc is a very important local community and it seemed like such an ambitious and positive project. It’s been a fascinating journey and I think we’ve all had a great learning experience working on a real life project of this scale.’
Wrexham’s lead member for housing, Cllr Ian Roberts, said: ‘The work the students have done for us has been invaluable so it’s fantastic news that the partnership has received national recognition at the Welsh Tenants Award. We were able to use the model they created at the open day event to show where potential changes could take place and it was so useful for tenants to be able to see the whole estate in front of them. The 3D walkthrough video the students are working on will also be a very useful tool which will help us see what a modernised Plas Madoc estate could look like. It’s taking us one step closer to making this ambitious project a reality for these tenants and it shows that there’s bright future in store for the tenants of this estate.’
More information on the work being carried out to meet the Welsh Housing Quality Standard can be found on Wrexham Council’s website – www.wrexham.gov.uk/whqs